My First Year With RGB LEDs

[OurMikeyRocks]

Enjoy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WyHyoATKHk

 

The core of my display is still Light-0-Rama - S3, SuperStar, AC controllers, DC controllers, DIO controller, and other miscellaneous equipment.  I didn't bother to do a channel or light count this year, but I'm sure it is greater than 128.  I would guess about 230 LOR channels and around 25,000 standard LEDs.

 

This is my first year with the RGB LEDs.  The megatree has 2080 and the leaping arches have 300.  These are under the control of SanDevices 682 controllers connected to the LOR software via the E1.31 interface.

 

My show is 100% LED.  It contains some elements that are new and some that are old.  The Ferris Wheel is 13 years old and is still the crowd favorite - I would probably have to move if I didn't put up the Ferris Wheel.  However, the megatree gave it a run for the money this year.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  The video doesn't really show it, but the megatree is 23 feet tall and the Ferris Wheel is 11 feet tall.

 

One of my significant observations is that the new RGB LEDs are very bright.  I had a hard time with them saturating the camera.  When you look at the video, you will see portions where the megatree shows color, but the rest of the image is very dark, and you will see portions where the megatree is showing only white and the rest of the image is normal.  I will seek advice and see if I can't do better photography next year.  And I will add more RGB LEDs next year.

 

Mikey

[Mega Arch]

Mikey,

Really nice. Love the show.

I expected the video to be trash after reading your post first - pleasantly surprised. Nice job.

Really like the ferris wheel.

Congratulations.

- Daniel

[saxon]

loved it, mikey!

[dgrant]

I was thinking about changing my megatrees over to pixels. May I ask how many strings you have there on yours? Taking a wild guess, looks like 14 or 16 but if its 2080 channels, how many nodes per string? Great display!

[Ron Boyd]

Enjoy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WyHyoATKHk

 

The core of my display is still Light-0-Rama - S3, SuperStar, AC controllers, DC controllers, DIO controller, and other miscellaneous equipment.  I didn't bother to do a channel or light count this year, but I'm sure it is greater than 128.  I would guess about 230 LOR channels and around 25,000 standard LEDs.

 

This is my first year with the RGB LEDs.  The megatree has 2080 and the leaping arches have 300.  These are under the control of SanDevices 682 controllers connected to the LOR software via the E1.31 interface.

 

My show is 100% LED.  It contains some elements that are new and some that are old.  The Ferris Wheel is 13 years old and is still the crowd favorite - I would probably have to move if I didn't put up the Ferris Wheel.  However, the megatree gave it a run for the money this year.  I was really pleased with how it turned out.  The video doesn't really show it, but the megatree is 23 feet tall and the Ferris Wheel is 11 feet tall.

 

One of my significant observations is that the new RGB LEDs are very bright.  I had a hard time with them saturating the camera.  When you look at the video, you will see portions where the megatree shows color, but the rest of the image is very dark, and you will see portions where the megatree is showing only white and the rest of the image is normal.  I will seek advice and see if I can't do better photography next year.  And I will add more RGB LEDs next year.

 

Mikey

 

Very nicely done.

 

I have a comment and a question.

 

First, the comment: If that's a bad video, I would love to see a good one. That being said, my question is, what type of camera did you use to video the display? I'm in the market for a good camera, but can't justify the cost of the pro gear. I'll only use it once a year to video my display. I have other cameras that take the family stuff just fine, but are seriously lacking when it comes to videoing the display.

 

In my research, the Canon Vixia keeps coming up as well as the Go Pro. 

 

Your display is fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

[bob_moody]

I am with Ron on this one ...

Really like the song ( we do a Brian Setzer song in our display), the layout and the sequencing we all well done ..

I really like the effects at about 2:00, may have just be the camera angle.. but it was pretty awesome.

Nice video and great edits .. I think we are from the same school regarding editing .. LOL ..

 

Very Nice..

 

Bob

[Grinch]

Nice Video.  If my good videos looked half as good as your video I would post them here also.  

[OurMikeyRocks]

First, thanks to everyone for the compliments.  Now I'll try to answer some of the questions.

 

The tree is a full round tree. There are 32 strings with 65 nodes each on the tree.  The nodes are set at 3.5 inch spacing.  Using my version of some DIY posts, I started with 1/16" wire rope that is vinyl coated to 1/8" - the vinyl is soft enough that the wire ties bite into it and don't slip.  I placed the light string onto this, using a 4" wire tie on each node with the lens end of the lamp pointing up.  When that was done I covered the entire string with 3/4" white wire loom.

 

My camera is a Nikon D5100 that came from Costco.  One of the features I liked is that it has an input jack (1/8" stereo jack) for audio.  I can just plug my old Walkman in and get an audio track of adequate quality to sync with the clean track in the final video.  I learned something in working with this audio input - when I tried using my iPod there was something wrong, the audio and video weren't in synch.  It took a little experimenting, but I discovered that the iPod has a time delay in it.  When you are using it with the headphones to listen to tunes, it doesn't matter.  When you are using it as the audio source for a movie, it really does matter.  So I went back to the old Walkman and that worked fine.

 

OK, I think I got everything answered.  Once again, thanks.

 

Mikey

 

The effect at 2:00 is called a pin wheel.  It's pretty wild and there are a lot of different things you can do with it.  In this case I didn't do a whole lot.

[dgrant]

Are you using 2 strings per universe for 16 universes on the E682? What type of nodes are you using if I may ask...WS2811's or similar? 5V or 12V?

[NEWTOUR]

Great job Mikey, I really like the depth of the full 360 megatree!!!

[OurMikeyRocks]

Are you using 2 strings per universe for 16 universes on the E682? What type of nodes are you using if I may ask...WS2811's or similar? 5V or 12V?

I am using the 12V WS2811 RGBs from Ray Wu.  There were 32 strings with 65 nodes per string.  I ran two strings per universe, but I only ran 4 universes out of one E682.  There were 4 E682s with 30A power supplies in each.  Each one was mounted in a 12" x 4" x 4" metal NEMA box with a vent added in the front cover just over the fan in the power supply and the knock outs opened up in the bottom.  I might do this differently if I didn't have CA weather.  Maybe I can get some pics posted on my website.  Mikey

[OurMikeyRocks]

Great job Mikey, I really like the depth of the full 360 megatree!!!

Thanks.  I did discover a problem with the 360 degree tree.  When I was sequencing last summer, I put letters/words into the sequences and they looked just fine on the 2D simulator.  When I ran them on the real tree, not so nice.  When you put a word on the tree and rotate it, the letters on one side will be as expected and the letters on the other side of the tree will be backward, making both of them pretty much unreadable since you see through the tree.  I put short clips (~6 seconds) between songs with "PEACE", "FAITH", "HOPE", "LOVE", and "JOY."  I had to sequence these by hand and leave the back of the tree turned off so that they were legible.  Mikey

[dgrant]

Guess I need to ask my dumb question, why did you do 4 E682's for it as opposed to 1? This last season, was my first with a pixel tree. It was only 12 strings, 50 nodes per string, 3 strings in series per universe, power injection between each 2nd and 3rd string and it was essentially a flat tree facing outward. I'm using Ray Wu's WS2811's as well with a JoshuaSystems ECG-P12S card and for the tree, using 4 universes out of the 12 there. This coming season, it'll become a 16 string tree but sticking with the 50 nodes per string. I'm planning on making some replacement arches this year, trying lpd6803's which are supposedly the same as a CCR strip. I'll find out shortly when I receive them and start testing. For you, I remember seeing that you can achieve some decent round-tree effects using either nutcracker or RGBStudio without actually having a round tree, therefore you could change your's into two 16 string trees and double the impact. BUT, got to say, your's does have a lot of depth when spiraling which is really nice. 

[OurMikeyRocks]

Guess I need to ask my dumb question, why did you do 4 E682's for it as opposed to 1? This last season, was my first with a pixel tree. It was only 12 strings, 50 nodes per string, 3 strings in series per universe, power injection between each 2nd and 3rd string and it was essentially a flat tree facing outward. I'm using Ray Wu's WS2811's as well with a JoshuaSystems ECG-P12S card and for the tree, using 4 universes out of the 12 there. This coming season, it'll become a 16 string tree but sticking with the 50 nodes per string. I'm planning on making some replacement arches this year, trying lpd6803's which are supposedly the same as a CCR strip. I'll find out shortly when I receive them and start testing. For you, I remember seeing that you can achieve some decent round-tree effects using either nutcracker or RGBStudio without actually having a round tree, therefore you could change your's into two 16 string trees and double the impact. BUT, got to say, your's does have a lot of depth when spiraling which is really nice. 

I'll see if I can explain - at least what I was thinking.  First, I believe each node is 0.3W or 25ma at 12VDC.  So if I run half of the tree out of one controller with one 30A power supply, the load would be 1040 X 0.025A = 26A + 500ma for the controller board, a total 0f 26.5A.  My preference for reliability reasons is not to run a power supply at 87% of the rated capacity, especially with marginal cooling inside a metal box.  So, I could have added another or larger power supply to the E682, but instead I just added another E682 with power supply.  I guess some of this is just personal preference.  I will sometimes explain this as "Whatever you can do, I can do different."  Notice that I didn't say better, just different.    Hopefully that makes sense (and my calculations are correct).  Mikey

[Brian Dietrich]

Awesome, loved the show. 

[dgrant]

I'll see if I can explain - at least what I was thinking.  First, I believe each node is 0.3W or 25ma at 12VDC.  So if I run half of the tree out of one controller with one 30A power supply, the load would be 1040 X 0.025A = 26A + 500ma for the controller board, a total 0f 26.5A.  My preference for reliability reasons is not to run a power supply at 87% of the rated capacity, especially with marginal cooling inside a metal box.  So, I could have added another or larger power supply to the E682, but instead I just added another E682 with power supply.  I guess some of this is just personal preference.  I will sometimes explain this as "Whatever you can do, I can do different."  Notice that I didn't say better, just different.    Hopefully that makes sense (and my calculations are correct).  Mikey

Ok, that makes very good sense and cool that you considered the power draw needs. I hadn't thought that far ahead and Thank You for mentioning that. I was simply looking at channel counts. I'm going to be adding some additional pixels to my tree and more connections outward so I'm adding a power supply for the same reason but on the extra buss to the card. I'll be testing everything here in the next couple of weeks as the new pixels just shipped out too me and yes, I'll be taking measurements of the voltage losses and of course, current draw. I agree totally with you that its not wise to pull from a power supply at full capabilities. Just because it can, doesn't mean its wise to do so. So back on your tree, multiple E682's and yet, flawless looking spirals, so the communications worked out beautifully. Again, very nice. 

[NWSanta]

Umm is there a smiley for smoke coming out of my ears???

 

1st love the display!

 

2nd -- need to understand pixels, universes, E1.31, injecting power and sequencing such amazing props!

In the middle of reading the RGB 101 from the Australian site. Hopefully it answers some questions!

 

Cheers

Evan

[jerrymac]

David at Holiday Coro has a great  series of RGB video's to help understand.  

From his main page www.holidaycoro.com  to the the product help & documentation header at the top, select How to articles then RGB basic videos.  Easier to watch than read sometimes.

Of course read Animated Lighting 101 from the Ausie board.